Rape accused caught in sadhu’s disguise after 5 years on the run

MUMBAI: The Mira-Bhayander-Vasai-Virar police crime branch on Thursday arrested a 42-year-old man who was on the run for five years after allegedly raping the 19-year-old daughter of his live-in partner.
According to the crime branch officers, the accused was arrested from Haridwar in Uttarakhand, where he had disguised himself as a ‘sadhu’ and assumed a new identity after fleeing from Virar in 2020.
A police officer of Unit 3 of the crime branch said that the widowed mother of the survivor met the accused in 2017 in a factory where he worked as a security guard. She moved in with him in 2018 along with her teenaged daughter. On September 16, 2020, when the woman was at work, the accused raped the teenager at knife point.
He then fled from the city. The Virar police had then registered a case under sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
“The woman was in shock and is still living with the trauma. The case had gone cold as the mother of the victim did not know any family member of the accused,” said the police officer.
Police began investigating the case once again when the survivor’s mother approached them with the request that her daughter needed closure as she quit studies after the incident and has been under depression ever since. The crime branch formed three teams which began tracking the accused.
While investigating his life before he met the survivor’s mother, the officers found that the accused had spent six months in a de-addiction centre in Vasai. On scanning the call logs of the phone at the centre, the police found that the accused was in touch with someone in Delhi. On digging deeper, they found out that he was calling up his family members who resided in the capital. On contacting them, the police found that the accused had moved to Haridwar.
‘With the help of the Uttarakhand police, the crime branch officers arrested the accused on Thursday and brought him to Mumbai on Friday. He was produced before the court on Friday where he was remanded to police custody for four days,” said the police officer.